Conventionally, as a gasoline internal combustion engine (hereinafter also referred to as “engine”) that is mounted, for example, on a vehicle, a so-called dual injection type engine is known, which has a dual injection system that includes a cylinder injection valve and an intake passage injection valve. Such a dual injection type engine has a problem that deposit is formed and accumulates on the cylinder injection valve, at an injection hole that faces a combustion chamber in a cylinder so as to be exposed to combustion gas having a high temperature.
To address the above problem, in a fuel injection device described in Patent Document 1, when only a port-injection injector (intake passage injection valve) is used due to, for example, duration of a low load operation such as an idling for a predetermined time period or longer, it is determined that the deposit greater than or equal to a predetermined amount accumulates on a cylinder-injection injector (cylinder injection valve). Then, even if the operation state is supposed to use the port-injection injector, the fuel is injected forcibly by the cylinder-injection injector so as to remove the deposit that accumulates on the injection hole (deposit removing control).